I think most of us try to teach our children to keep their word. If they say they’re going to do something they should do it. I think we should expect the US to keep its word. And that word should be durable beyond changes in Congress and changes in the presidency.
The Ukraine used to have nuclear weapons. They agreed to give them up with certain assurances.
In 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to transfer these weapons to Russia for dismantlement and became a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in exchange for economic compensation and assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom to respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, a violation of its assurances under the Budapest Memorandum that was compounded by Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Clearly Russia violated their word rather violently. I would expect we should be able to assure the international community that we would keep our word.
Remember back in Trump’s first term when he was trying to get the Ukrainian government to give him some dirt of Biden’s son? He said in effect, “It would be a shame if something were to happen to that nice little country you got there.” And then shortly thereafter Putin invaded Ukraine.
And then when Zelensky visited the Oval Office a while ago looking to solidify support they instead ripped him a new one and said he should wear a suit (Musk was there the following week with no suit and there were zero complaints about attire).
Now to be fair the US provided a lot of aid to the Ukraine but that seems to have recently largely dried up.
Much non-military support was through USAID but that was shuttered first thing in Elon’s DOGE purge. Here’s a graph of aid to the Ukraine.
Now if there is in fact legitimate reason to change course I would expect at bare minimum we’d require all of Congress to agree on such a change, and I would support requiring a super majority to effect such a change.
Under Trump there have been threats to take Greenland by military force, tussles with Canada and Mexico, tariffs against other long term partners, and we’ve kidnapped the president of the sovereign nation of Venezuela. (Yeah, whatever happened with that? Remarkably little in the news…)
And then Trump has criticized NATO for failing to cough up their share. I think it’s in bounds to discuss that but there are two ways to approach things: as friends and saying “hey let’s work this out” or by pointing fingers, making threats, and otherwise strong arming the smaller countries.
Trump backed out of the accord with Iran early on in his 2nd term and then attacked them, assured us that their nuclear programs was destroyed, and then attacked them again suggesting there was imminent nuclear danger. C’mon, it took North Korea 30 years to go from trying to enrich to actually building a bomb and weaponizing it. There was no indication we needed to attack them, no imminent danger. Sidenote: North Korea tested and actively worked on delivery of a nuclear weapon on Trump’s watch. Crickets.
I’ve read numerous places how it will take decades to rebuild trust in the US. We need to make some changes at home first and we need to trust our own government if the world is ever to trust us again.